Unlocking shareholder value from shared services

Shared service functions such as finance and HR are more important to the success of most corporations today than they ever have been. Yet in many companies, they receive far less executive attention than the business units because shared services are not expected to generate profits. This article proposes that senior executives should require equally high standards for strategic‐planning and profit‐generating initiatives from their shared services as they do from business units. As a case study illustration, the authors describe how Champion International adopted a process to push shared service managers into value‐enhancing initiatives and strategies and how that process helped transform the company’s performance.